The Answer in Renamon's Hands
by DigitalTab
Summary: Haunted by a strange music and dogged by her itching, bleeding paws, Renamon flees into the Shadow Abyss to find the answer to the darkness that troubles her heart. Oneshot/complete


**Author's Note: I expect confusion in my fics that shall be addressed in my profile but that I also will address in an author's note preceding every fic.**

**All my Digimon fics are based off the game Digimon Dusk. As such, the characterizations for the digimon and characters are undeveloped at best, nonexistent at worst. I will not talk about how I perhaps am just too lazy to write "IC" here (that's for the profile), instead I will tell you that I chose characterizations for each character that I felt fit where there was or wasn't any available development.**

**I rarely watch the digimon shows, but where I knew even a little bit about the digimon, I tried to apply some of that characterization.**

**For more information on my writing or about me, please see my profile. Questions not answered there may be left in a signed review, if you wish. (I won't reply to unsigned reviews, sorry. At the least leave an email address.)**

_Sing a song of sixpence_

_A pocketful of rye_

_Four and twenty blackbirds_

_Baked into a pie._

Here, Renamon paused. She was hearing that song again, that song she learned so long ago. The song that didn't belong here in the Shadow Abyss, where lava braced itself against the black sky. It feathered out, almost like a birdramon with its Meteor Wing, then fell into obscurity again. Renamon's fox tail twitched with anticipation.

SkullGreymon's scent was on the air. A dead, killing scent, it chilled and delighted Renamon all at the same time.

_Kitsu, Kitsu. How I love my Kitsu!_

Why did she have to hurt so much? SkullGreymon would know what balm could soothe this burning ailment in Renamon's heart. Her very breaths felt scorched as she ascended a steep hill and looked over Shadow Abyss.

Postured on a lone, lava-locked rock was SkullGreymon. His massive head lifted and his hollow eyes watched Renamon's slow descent down the hill, toward him.

Those eyes, those eyes! The very image of madness, of the loneliness Renamon plunged deeper into everyday.

_You know, Kitsu, if you think too much about power and winning, you'll turn into something even _I_ wouldn't be able to face._

Why was it Renamon felt so lonely and monstrous now that she had cleared away the one obstacle that kept her from being the best digimon she could possibly be? What was it that made her heart race, her throat dry, her fox ears quiver to hear the strains of words she should have released long, long ago?

SkullGreymon loomed before her. He was a masterpiece of dry, whitish bones. Somehow, he managed to smile. Greenish puffs came from his cavernous throat, where foul fires flickered.

"I know why you're here," he bent his head to her level and patted her shoulder with his tail. "And you've got no reason to be ashamed."  
Renamon glared. "Then tell me what I need to know, SkullGreymon!"

SkullGreymon's harsh breathing and raspy words grated Renamon's senstive ears. He seemed to note this and enjoy it, so he loudly said, "The answer is on your hands!"  
Shaking, Renamon looked her paws over. But they appeared normal to her. She glared again.

"What do you see?"

"What do you not see?"

"My answer!"  
He chuckled, then coughed. He hocked up a wad of green flame and spat it into the lava. The lava hissed, roared, then shot up in a flurry of incredible heat and power. Renamon cried out and fell back. She turned and scrambled up the hill just as the heat was taking the fur off her back. Renamon sat at the top and panted, panted and looked on until the lava died down and SkullGreymon was nothing more than a greymon's skull atop a dingy rock.

She went on, deeper into Shadow Abyss. It called to her.

Her paws--hands, that stupid digmon had called them--began to burn and ache. She scratched them. She rubbed them against porous lava rock. Nothing relieved the insane itch, the eternal burning, that had overtaken her paws. Renamon scratched and rubbed as she stumbled along Shadow Abyss's rough terrain until her paws felt went and sticky and she looked at them by the light of the lava.

Blood.

Digimon bled? Such a strange question, but now that she was here, and her paws were bleeding, Renamon remembered other things that bled. Like hearts. Bleeding hearts of red and gold. Bah!  
_Bah_! She spat her bitterness into the lava. The black-spotted fire liquid rippled then some of it gathered together, congealing into a tall, dark figure. His pale face was mostly capped by his mask. Two horns stuck out on either side of it. His wings were tattered, his arms long, his fingers gnarled and beckoning.

"Do I detect the infamous Renamon? The Renamon who can't remember?"  
Renamon took a step back from Devimon and said, "The Renamon who can't remember? This is my name now?"  
"And here you thought it was Kitsu!"  
She crinkled her nose. That had only been a little thought she'd been entertaining. She'd never let it amount to much. The very syllables of that horrid name made her ears and chest ache.

"Explain this," she outstretched her hands into Devimon's waiting claws. He looked them over and shook his head.

"Ah, but Renamon," He said, swiping away some of the blood. "There is your answer right there."

_Sing a song of sixpence_

_A pocket full of rye_

_Four and twenty blackbirds_

_Baked into a pie._

_Sing it, don't frown like that, you know I love you!_

Renamon lunged for Devimon's throat. He chortled and ghosted backward so that Renamon tumbled for the lava. He caught her up in his gangly arms and lifted her like a baby. There he rocked her until she snarled and bit down on his smallest finger. Devimon flung her onto the rocks again. A growl rumbled in his throat. Before he disappeared into the lava, he muttered something about ingratitude and the inability of digimon to see what was really before them.

She waited for the lava to produce another spectre, then went on. She had no time for this.

Yet her paws continued to itch and burn, no matter how much she bled them. The itching and burning were her constant companions as she went ever deeper into Shadow Abyss. Jagged mountains rose up on either side of her. The lava grew darker and emitted sinister gurgles from time to time.

_How about this?_

_Over hill, over dale,_

_We will hit the dusty trail--_

A kick and a twirl of dust. Renamon plunged into the glowering darkness.

--------

There came a point where Renamon's sense of time failed. She might have been running for minutes, hours, days, weeks, years--or perhaps it had only been seconds and the eternal mountains around her were evidence of that. She couldn't even pretend to know. Just like she couldn't pretend to stop the itch that made her bleed her paws.

But now she was coming loose. She felt her digicore pulsing through her breast. Exhaustion dogged her steps. She finally collapsed at the foot of a tall, weathered statue.

"What is this?"

Statues in Shadow Abyss? The digimon here tolerated that?

_Sing a song of sixpence_

_A pocket full of rye_

_Four and twenty blackbirds_

_Baked into a pie._

Renamon cried out and backed away from the statue's moving, emotionless lips. The statue looked down on her with its blank eyes and stepped off its pedestal. Each shift of its limbs caused pieces of itself to crumble and fall to the earth.

_Ha hah_! Was the statue's next expression. It wrapped its enormous stone hand around Renamon's body. She struggled to slip free but the statue only threatened to crush her with its titan grip. Finally, she panted, feeling the digicore begin to slip from her chest. In her mind, she held it there, where it was, because she would die if she lost her digicore. She would turn into a ribbon of data and be absorbed here in Shadow Abyss and no one would care about her because she was not yet great and she no longer had her tamer.

But her tamer had her. It was staring her right in the face.

Though the statue's face was still weathered stone, Renamon saw in it the features of a young man with a pointed chin and soft eyes. There were his hands around her body, as if he had suddenly become a giant and had come from some data graveyard to haunt her. It was all in her mind, wasn't it? She couldn't tell. It had to be this failing digicore. . .

That blood, too. It dribbled from her paws like a stalactite and hardened from the ground up. The statue chortled and released her and Renamon was left precariously balanced on her own stony blood.

"Who are you?"

"And who are _you_?" The statue said.

Renamon spat in its face. "Are you the one who's been singing that awful song?" She wanted to kick loose but knew of the terrible fall that waited.

Her digicore peered from her breast and lines of data began to unwind from her body. Renamon snarled at the smiling statue.

"Your heart is harder than stone. Harder than my stone. Tell me, how does one become like that?"

Her legs had turned to stone.

The stone moved up her body as the data continued to unwind until there was nothing left of her but stone.The stalactites under her slowly shriveled like plants in Resistor Jungle. She bent down and stayed like that for a long time. Renamon expected she would be immobile, yet, here she was, able to move, however slowly, however ponderously.

And that statue with her tamer's face looked on and smiled before its face became dead and weathered once more. It stood, looking down on her, and was covered in lava moss to defy all kinds of logic.

Renamon turned around and went back. Without opening her mouth, and hardly realizing it, she began to sing.

-----------

Blackwargreymon ran as fast as he could before SkullGreymon could blast him with greenish lava. Blackwargreymon's body ached and his thoughts raced. His digicore threatened to break and he had a murder on his hands. He'd killed his own tamer.

Not that it had been an accident. It hadn't taken much to plunge his claws into that too-soft chest and draw out a lot of blood. Strangely, now his claws were bleeding. How they itched, too! He couldn't understand how metal could bleed, how tiny drops of reddish tamer blood could leach from them and hiss on the hot, porous rocks of the Shadow Abyss. In any case, Blackwargreymon ran and beneath the lava, he thought he heard a hissing voice.

_Sing a song of sixpence_

_A pocket full of rye_

_Four and twenty blackbirds_

_Baked into a pie. . ._


End file.
